The invention relates to an absorbent incontinence article of the open type, having a main part, consisting of a front region, a rear region and a crotch region that is located in between in the longitudinal direction and comes to lie between the legs of a user, wherein the main part comprises an absorbent pad, and having separate side portions that are attached to the rear region and/or to the front region on both sides, are provided with closure means, extend in the transverse direction beyond lateral longitudinal edges of the main part and connect the front region and the rear region together in the put-on state of the article.
Incontinence articles of this kind are known and described, for example, in WO 2005/102241 A1. The side portions, which are sometimes also referred to as ears, are preferably attached directly to the main part, the chassis of the sanitary article, in a cut and place method. This manufacturing technology makes it possible to manufacture the side portions from a different raw material than the central main part of the sanitary article. For example, the side portions can be configured in an air-permeable manner, whereas the central main part can be formed in a substantially moisture-impermeable manner.
The most efficient and simplest, and also most cost-effective, shape of the side portions from a manufacturing point of view is the rectangular shape. This allows the materials forming the side portions to be transported during production in the form of an endless web of flat material from which the side portions are then severed transversely to the machine direction. There are virtually no offcuts in this case.
However, it has been shown that, particularly during the formation of the side portions in the otherwise advantageous rectangular form, when the sanitary article is being put on and while it is being worn, the problem sometimes occurs that the attached side portions can tear in the region of the lateral longitudinal edges of the main part. It has specifically been shown that, when users put on the sanitary article, they tend to exert a pull on the side portions obliquely to the transverse and longitudinal directions of the sanitary article, this being indicated in FIG. 1 by way of an obliquely upwardly inclined arrow. In such cases, it is possible for side portions to tear along the lateral longitudinal edges of the main part, with the tear propagating from the transverse edge, facing the crotch region, of the side portion. Hitherto, attempts have been made to improve the attachment of such side portions to the main part of sanitary articles by an optimum joining pattern, as per WO 2004/017882 A2 and WO 02/17843 A2.
A further proposal known from the prior art is to provide the side portions with a reinforcement means which, as seen in the transverse direction, is formed in a narrower manner than each side portion and which is provided at least in a region bridging the longitudinal side edge of the main part, that is to say overlays both a lateral longitudinal edge region of the main part and also a part of the side portion in the transverse direction (DE102006050971A1).
The present invention is based on the object of solving the problem outlined above in a more effective manner, that is to say to create absorbent incontinence articles having at the front and the rear in each case two laterally joined and attached side portions, in the case of which the tearing behavior of the side portions is significantly improved.